REACH

​"Reach" - acrylic on cradled birchwood panel,  11" x 14" x .75".  Ready to hang (sides are painted; no need to frame.  Hanging wire attached). Available here and at Artfinder.

“There are things you can’t reach. But
You can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.
And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
As though with your arms open.”
― Mary Oliver

​This week in the studio I am channeling the color palettes of Seba Urgurtan  (more specifically her 2014 figurative work) along with a continued effort to merge background with foreground in a figurative piece.  Learning to embrace 80 million layers of very similar colors in slightly varying hues, and falling in love with the way those layers build and peek and sing and soothe.  

​(Many thanks to reader and artist extraordinaire  Trina Tarlton for introducing me to the work of Urgurtan!)

Reach

The pose of this piece attracted me to the words of Oliver, which of course felt a little like the universe expounding on my own life and the desire to keep reaching out...or, rather,  "standing around as though with (my) arms open."   I am learning, lately, to look with my arms open.  And by arms I also mean heart and mind and life and spirit.  The more I stand with arms open, looking, the more I see and feel and know exquisite things I never dreamed of before.  

Along with that, of course, I also see and feel and know sorrow, pain, longing, loneliness, doubt and grief. My own and also the feelings of those my arms reach for and hold tenderly.   And yet, in the slow, careful pace of a pandemic, there is time to process all the things and give them each  attention.  It feels right, this pace.  I'm pretty sure my current spirit creature is snail or sloth or slow loris.  Bring it on, universe, but slowly. :)

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​While I get back to work on videos, enjoy a little pictorial history of this painting:

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​​Thank you to everyone who participated in the Get the Gallery cyber Art Drop!  Wonder  Mike's sticky paws selected two winners at random from all of those who shared GTG's Facebook art posts.  Congratulations Angela V. and Debra H!  You will each receive one of these mixed media creations in the mail.  Hooray!